A Charm of Powerful Trouble Read Online Free

followed a creek fringed by trees struggling under the weight of vines. The line was cut into the hillsides, and they seemed to be pushing against the forest at each turn. Emma thought she would be swallowed by all that lush, green dampness.
    And then she was at Aunt Em's station, a tiny faded weatherboard building surrounded by tree ferns and palms, a station so small it was hardly a station at all, to Emma's city-bred eyes. An old woman waited on the platform, watching alertly. She and Emma recognised each other at once, and would have even if they hadn't been the only people there.
    Aunt Em was tall and upright, with a beaky nose and a face that was full of anticipation. She was narrow, with no hips or breasts, so that her cotton dress was like a pillowcase for her body, with a belt around the middle. Aunt Em put her arms around Emma briefly and Emma felt how thin she was, but strong. The whisker Beth had told her about pricked Emma on the cheek but she hardly felt it, so overwhelmed was she by her surprising and sudden arrival after the long hours of rattling along a track. ‘It's so lovely to see you, dear,’ said Aunt Em. She blinked quickly, before turning away.
    She had been brought to the station by a neighbour, a young woman named Flora, who had the longest hair Emma had ever seen, and the shortest miniskirt, and the nicest legs. Emma, who loved sketching, felt that she could draw Flora's legs then and there. But then she was bustled out to Flora's little Austin, where she met Flora's eight-year-old daughter Stella, who sucked her thumb and looked with frank curiosity when Emma crawled into the back seat beside her.
    Emma took in everything, staring intently from the window of the car: the winding road with camphor laurel trees pressing in from both sides, the paddocks full of scotch thistles and lantana and cattle, the outcrops of bananas on the hills. There was a sense of things growing headlong in the heat and the wet. And she was watching for the house, to see if it was as Beth had said.
    It was. She recognised it from Beth's description even before they turned in the drive. It was set back in a paddock with hills behind it and a creek winding down one side: large, two-storeyed, with rusty iron lace on the upstairs verandah and peeling paint on the timber walls.
    From the front door you could see right through the house, down the long shadowy hallway to the back, where there was a concrete path and a rusty water tank illuminated by sunlight. Halfway up the hall was a staircase leading to the upper floor. It was all as Beth had described.
    Emma closed her eyes. She wanted the experience of being here to be hers, not a second-hand version of Beth's. The trouble with being the younger sister was that you were never the first to do anything.
    Emma opened her eyes and saw Aunt Em looking at her, as quizzical as a finch. ‘Are you all right, dear?’
    â€˜Oh, Aunt Em . . .’ she said. The newness of it all was almost too much for her.
    â€˜Just call me Em,’ said her aunt, kindly.
    Flora came inside with Emma's bag. ‘There you go!’ she said, setting it down in the hallway.
    â€˜Thank you so much, my dear.’ Em managed to look both grateful and taken aback. Emma was to grow used to her look of perpetual surprise; all those years of being alive hadn't lessened one scrap her astonishment at the world.
    â€˜My pleasure,’ said Flora. She put her hands out in a broad gesture of uselessness and shrugged. ‘Well, I'll leave you to it.’ She clattered out through the front door, trailed after by Stella, who'd only just finished trailing inside, and who gave Emma a lively backward glance as she departed.

    The house smelt of lamb fat, and wood smoke, and lavender perfume. The bedroom Emma was to stay in was sparse and clean. It had double doors leading onto a verandah with ancient, splintered boards. There were fresh flowers on a chest of drawers, and a new bedspread.